Archivo del December, 2013

Fr. Marià Íbar, SJ passed away last week. He was ESADE’s second Director General from 1964 to 1969 and was for me a link to the early years of ESADE, co-founded by the Society of Jesus and a group of relevant Catalan businessmen in 1958. In those early years ESADE was very much a local institution, born of the desire to provide higher management and leadership education and training and an organised network for the local business community.

Those early Director Generals (all Jesuits), starting with Father Lluís Antoni Sobreroca, were men of spirit and great character who forged an early and, no doubt, home-grown business school, starting with 34 students in a converted family house located in one of Barcelona´s residential areas. By 1960 the Business Studies Degree and Master in Management initially offered were extended to include executive training and development activities, and in 1964 the MBA programme was launched. These early ESADE pioneers already showed healthy entrepreneurial signs of growth and improvement, and by 1965 a newly constructed ESADE building was opened.

A week ago, all of ESADE’s Barcelona campuses experienced the multiculturalism and global and innovative spirit which characterise our programmes closer than ever. As host of the CEMS Annual Events, ESADE had the honour of serving as the focal point for nearly 3,000 people linked to today’s academic world.

Four institutions founded the CEMS Alliance 25 years ago: ESADE, HEC and Cologne and Bocconi universities. Their aim was to create a European executive programme. That is how the CEMS-MIM (Master in International Management) was born, a programme habitually at the top of the Financial Times’ annual ranking of international programmes. Without doubt, the idea of a world without borders, one in which knowledge grows exponentially as it is shared amongst different networks, was ahead of its time.